Page:Tragedies of Sophocles (Plumptre 1878).djvu/522

424 Ye bade the tide of evil flee,

Drive off this fiery woe as once ye drove before.

Yea come; for lo! I fail

To tell my woes' vast tale;

For all my host in fear and sickness languish,

And weapons fail each mind;

For the earth's increase kind

Is gone, and women faint in childbirth's anguish:

Thou see'st men, one by one,

Like bird of fleetest wing,

Swifter than flashing ray of sun,

Pass to His gloomy shore who reigns of darkness King.

Countless the spoil of death;

Our city perisheth,

And on the tainted earth our infants lie;

The tender heart is cold,

And wives and matrons old,

Now here, now there, by every altar cry.

And clear the Pæans gleam,

And chants of sorrow born;

Ο golden child of Zeus supreme,

Put forth thy power to help, bright-eyed as is the morn!

And Ares, mighty One,

Who weaponless comes on,

And fierce and hot with battle-cry assaileth,—

Bid him in flight to tread

By Amphitrite's bed,

Or Thrakia's homeless coast where wild wave waileth.